natalia ilyin

Some projects just fly on wings.
Here's a note from Aaron, a student I met during a RISD workshop
two years ago:

As many of you know, last summer I started a collaborative poster
project in support of Barack Obama's campaign,
Design for Obama (http://www.designforobama.org );
it aggregated a sizable poster collection, formed an international
community of designers ranging from novice to professional, and got a
fair amount of attention in the process.

After receiving a phone call from the legendary filmmaker and
activist, Spike Lee, he and I teamed up to publish the growing poster
collection. Spike had been sent one of our posters, specifically a
remix of his "Do the Right Thing" movie poster where the title had
been changed to "Did the Right Thing" and Spike had been replaced with
Obama. This poster led him to the entire collection.

Thanks to his efforts, those of legendary design author and
historian Steven Heller, and the good people at Taschen Books,
this November 4th will see the publication of
Design for Obama - Posters for Change: A Grassroots Anthology.

I am incredibly excited and honored that my foreword will
be accompanied by essays from Lee and Heller, not to mention 200 of
the best posters submitted to designforobama.org in the course of the
2008 presidential election.

The book is available for preorder on amazon.com now
(http://bit.ly/CEZ16) and will be released this November 4th
to celebrate Obama's historic win.
We'll be having book signings in New York and Los Angeles
(details to come) and I'd love to see you there!

A great essay about life and choice:

http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/

What with a number of its Visual Communications instructors coming right out of the hotbed of technology and design that is Seattle, Cornish College is a buzzing place when it comes to features and applications. For this reason, at the start of this new semester, I found myself playing around with a new project management software. It was originally intended for, er-- project management-- but is now being tested here as a new tool to help organize and simplify the interaction of students and teachers. It's an easy and delightful program, and gives one the impression of immediate mastery, always a winning gambit. But it has brought up a question in my mind. And that question is one about over-parenting.

The software is just great and I'll be using it, and it is going to be acting as an "always on" conduit between me and my students. Forget an assignment? It's up there. Miss the syllabus? It's here for you. Lose the document? Download the pdf.

When looked at as a sort of go-to archive for the class, it really is appealing, and I think it will be useful. But here's my question.

Isn't part of education the learning of mental skills that keep you from forgetting the assignment, missing the syllabus, losing the document? Isn't part of your education learning to save and access these bits and pieces of information, to systematize them according to your own created system? Isn't part of learning figuring out a way to know where you put the information in your head and where to find it again?

Life doesn't always provide a site to which you can go to regain a lost opportunity, to get a second chance, to live that piece again. Some things happen only once, and if you're smart, your mind is there when they happen. You catch them for yourself. You make decisions about their value for yourself.

The creation of "storage and retrieval" systems within one's own brain is a part of educating oneself to be an individual. It's nice to have everything from my class in a handy project management tool. We'll all use it. But we'll be handing over a bit of our power to choose. We'll be using someone else's mental system, filling in blanks instead of deciding for ourselves what needs to be remembered.

You know things are hectic when you put on what you think is your fabulous Sensaria mango lip balm, and it turns out to have been a glue stick.

Quitting Facebook has given my life more leading.
I am prancing airily about, doing one thing at a time and ticking stuff off the list in a completely not-psychotic manner. Chopping water and carrying wood.
No, wait....